Open Collections

Ngieng, Sofia

University of British Columbia

Migration and mobility narratives are beginning to approach political thought from a decolonized perspective that seeks to disrupt and unsettle sedimented ideas of land and borders within law, politics, and academia. This paper identifies these advances in mobility and migration narratives, analyzing and connecting large themes revealed in a broad perspective of Indigenous-minded scholarly works while expanding understandings of these narratives to consider the contributions and implications of Métis narratives. I argue that, given the increase of discussions surrounding who and where is Métis, it is critical to begin locating space for Métis narratives within migration and mobility narratives as it reveals the complications of land reclamation with settler colonial structures of governance that may be detrimental to the sovereignty and identity of Métis peoples in Canada. Utilizing a framework that distinguishes between settler, First Nations, and Métis contributions to migration and mobility narratives, this paper advances understandings of mobility by firstly locating three overarching migration-mobility themes in Indigenous-minded literature. The first theme locates and solidifies the important connection between sovereignty, land, and migration within Indigenous literature. The second theme recognizes how Indigenous narratives unsettle ideas of borders and migration. The third theme recognizes the nuances of the citizenship regime as it impacts Indigenous identity. After identifying and solidifying these three themes amongst broader, Indigenous scholarship, this paper moves into a discussion which advocates for the expansion of migration and mobility narratives towards the contributions of Métis people through struggles for identity in the Canadian nation state which ultimately have an impact on migration and mobility narratives. This paper asserts this argument by utilizing the previously located themes to analyze Métis connections to the field of migration, noting that Métis narratives should be considered in discussions about migration and mobility as legislation surrounding their identity ultimately impacts their mobility within the framework of migration. The location of Métis spaces amongst the dialectic of migration and mobility narratives opens up new pathways for understanding the location of Indigenous voices and scholarship within the field.

Text

2024-10-18

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89447

Political Science

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/